


gemini

by centralsaints



Category: My Candy Love
Genre: Astrology, Character Study, Eating Disorders, F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, POV Second Person, Pining, Trauma, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:08:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25554826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/centralsaints/pseuds/centralsaints
Summary: Armin's horoscope says that Geminis have trouble making decisions. He still hasn't decided if he believes in astrology or not.
Relationships: Armin/Nathaniel (My Candy Love), Castiel/Iris (My Candy Love)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	1. science fiction/double feature

**Author's Note:**

> this started out as a vent fic that slowly grew very big i started writing in late april, during isolation. i wasn't even going to post it, but i've distanced myself a bit from it and now i accidentally have a whole character exploration fic :pensivememoji:   
> also started experimenting with second person with this thing, so the first bits are. rough lets say, i also didn't do a lot of parts editing, just went out looking for mistakes.

You’re a gemini sun, cancer rising, and libra moon. You’re not particularly interested in astrology, or even know a lot about it. You only know your birth chart because Alexy knows his by heart, and given you are twins, it’s nearly identical, save for one or two planets. Alexy checks his horoscope and warns you when mercury goes in retrograde. You ask him if he really does believe that planets and the date and time of your birth rule your feelings and how you act out and see the world if he thinks it really does matter. He says yes, almost offended that you questioned his obviously strong belief in the influence of Venus in the fourth house or whatever it was. He tells you everyone needs something to believe in, and that queer people have so often been rejected from organized beliefs that they need to make their own. Alexy believes that the stars will tell him who he is and what he needs to do. You think that’s a little weird, but it’s valid. 

Some people do need to believe in something. Alexy believes in planets and the zodiac. Your mother believes in the feng shui arrangement of a home (she’s a little liberal about the application, but she does really believe that a harmonized circulation of energies, good communication, and color coordination are what keeps a home happy. You don’t think she’s wrong), and your father believes in science-fiction. The good ones, like old Star Trek episodes, or Blade Runner or the Matrix franchise. You like science fiction, but you don’t think you believe in it. You don’t think you really believe in anything (not even yourself, but you don’t say that to anyone). Violette once told Iris about her collection of crystals. This is why she keeps a piece of sodalite (for creative thinking) and a rose quartz necklace (for anxiety) on her almost at all times. She was so quiet when you asked her what those crystals were supposed to do (you didn’t mean to be so blunt about it, you were genuinely curious, so you reassured her it was okay and she turned every shade of pink and she explained it to you still quietly, picking at the skin on her thumb the whole time). You don’t know what Iris believes in. She never said it that day. 

You liked Iris. You think you still like her. You got a crush on (and became friends with) her pretty fast after you first met her. There was something about how she was so easy to tease, but always laughing about it that made your heart swells. It was also maybe about how open she seemed, how it didn’t look like she had secrets, or fears (you later learned she had multiple instances of both, but it didn’t take away from how attracted you were to her). You invited her to have movie nights with you, in the basement, and you asked Alexy to specifically not disturb you while she was there, (Alexy may be insufferable when he knows you have a crush, but he also knows to leave you alone and pester you _after_ what you think of like a date) and you’d watch weird science-fiction and horror movies (you don’t want to say it, but you are simultaneously fascinated and terrified of _good_ horror movies, the ones that really do scare you and fuck with your head. You tend to avoid those) and sometimes make fun at how bad they were. One time she suggested you watch Rocky Horror Picture Show, which, at that point, you had never watched. You were never a musicals kind of person (Alexy was the one who enjoyed Disney movies the most when you were young; you remember your favorite movie being something like Robot or The Iron Giant), but you laughed so much at how ridiculous it all gets as the movie progresses, and Iris knew all the songs by heart that you couldn’t just not like it. You watched it many times after that, and each time it reminded you of her. Sometimes you’d look at each other at school, and one of you would say _damn it, Janet!_ under your breath and you’d both have to stifle a laugh if you were in class. 

You think you had started to fall in love with her a little. She held your hand, one time. You were watching _Carrie,_ the one from 1976, and she had scooted closer to you at some point. She had told you before you started the movie that she had read the original novel a few times before and that you should try it sometimes. It was one of her favorite books, she said. You told her that “ if your single ADHD brain cell lets you”, you’d try to read it. For her. You think there was something between you, has you detangled yourself from one another when the movie finished, and you accompanied her to the door, watching her put her shoes on (she does it the same way you do: she doesn’t undo the laces and forces the shoe onto her foot. You both have joked about how many pairs of perfectly good sneakers you have ruined this way, and how much both of your mothers hate it). There was something, you tell yourself, in the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear (you still remember the scent of her hair as she put her head on your shoulder that night, as the movie neared its climax when Carrie gets ready for the fatal prom night) and wished you goodnight. You should have given her a hug, in retrospect. Or a kiss. Just something, to show her you cared. To feel out how things (what things? Your feelings? Hers?). But you were paralyzed by fear of rejection and anxiety and how her eyes seemed to see right through you, you thought what if you read the signals wrong and you were seeing things? 

(You were never as good with social cues as Alexy was, and you guess it’s something from being a gemini that you didn’t get.)

So you did nothing. You wished her goodnight with a small smile and watched her leave through the window, and then you went to sleep (you did not sleep that night), and thought about how you still didn’t know what Iris believed in. In retrospect, you wish she had stayed the night and you could have talked about that and a myriad of other things, and maybe it could have helped you figure out a few things about yourself.


	2. oblivion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the weirdest part for me to post because it's the one that's the closest, but i didn't want to edit it out or change the events a lot. so it may be a little bit of a weird read.   
> mildly suggestive content, and also three people drinking an entire bottle of white rhum. don't do that, i speak from experience

Nothing ever (really) happened between you and her (and sometimes you regret it). But you stayed friends, and movie nights continued. She didn’t hold your hand again. At one point during the summer, Castiel joined you to go through your movie list. You weren’t exactly friends with him at school, but you started really talking to him when you couldn’t sleep one night and you were aimlessly walking around your neighborhood, leading you to a (closed at this hour) park, where you also found Castiel, who looked almost as tired as you felt. It was nearly one in the morning and you got high together, talking about things you mostly forgot (you don’t want to say it was the weed, but yes, you forgot most of what you talked about with Castiel that night because you were so high you kept staring up at the sky wondering what Castiel’s astrological chart looked like).

The first movies you watched with both Iris and Castiel were the first  _ Paranormal Activity  _ and of course, because he said he knew the movie but hadn’t watched it in some time,  _ Rocky Horror Picture Show  _ (you assumed it was because of Lysander; Castiel didn’t seem like the type to like weird 1970s musical B movies. Maybe you should have asked him. Maybe he liked it solely for the music, which, you admit, is pretty fucking good). You think this might be when your heart started going haywire (it might also be because you’d noticed Iris and Castiel were awfully close, like childhood friends, and you felt left out of complicity you had no part in, and you didn’t understand how to connect with them).

Or it might also have been when you decided to watch Twilight, at the start of October, and made it a drinking game, with a bottle of white rum Castiel had brought to this movie night, because you had the house to yourself. You’re still thankful that the house was empty because there are things you wouldn’t have known how to explain. You still don’t know how to explain them to this day. The bottle of rum was almost full, and by the end of the night it wasn’t, and you were in the bathroom because this was simply where conversations end up when you’re this drunk. You had stopped watching Twilight long ago, stopping after the first scene of the second movie because this was the stage where drunk discussions become intimate and philosophical and deep and sometimes painful. And then it moved to the bathroom because someone needed to pee (Castiel and Iris did, and you were all so drunk that you just continued talking in the bathroom while peeing happened). 

You remember it was Castiel who started. He started it by saying that you and Iris were both hot and that if you were down for a threesome, he was. You looked at him, entranced. You remember having this dumb, naive, drunk smile on your face. You remember looking at Iris, who was looking in between the floor and Castiel, her cheeks and the tips of her ears red. You also remember thinking how much you wish she would look at you like that, how much you liked (loved) her. Castiel had never bothered to put his pants back on. He only had his boxers and his stupidly worn out My Chemical Romance t-shirt on, and at that moment, you found yourself so ridiculously attracted to him that it made you dizzy (it brought you doubts, and unlocked the little questions you had been asking yourself ever since Alexy came out that you had never bothered to address because you didn’t think  _ you  _ could be anything but straight). 

It was him who kissed you first. You were sitting on the edge of the bathtub, and you think you remember that he asked before diving in and kissing you so hard you fell back into the tub (you don’t remember it hurting, you don’t know if it’s because you were too drunk or too in disbelief that you were kissing someone so hard and so breathlessly to notice), you put your arms around his neck and you were  _ gone.  _ When he pulled away, it was to help you get out of the tub and reseat you to the floor, where he also sat in front of you. You remember him kissing Iris. It was tender, like something they had done before (or had been waiting to do for years, you couldn’t really tell and you never asked) and you licked your lips when you felt your heart do something a little weird in your chest. You couldn’t tell what it was at the moment, and you don’t think you’d be able to recall exactly what it was. Castiel said something else to you (that you also don’t remember; this is a pattern of that night and a pattern of your history with Castiel it seems) and you kissed him almost as hard as he just did when you fell in the bathtub. You remember gripping his jaw but also (carefully) letting your hands roam under his shirt.  _ You  _ pulled away first, looking to Iris, her head resting against the cabinet where you were making out (making out?) with Castiel, and this is the one thing you distinctly remember, you asked if you could kiss her, just this once because you never got to and now it’s obvious that her heart is looking somewhere else. You just want to kiss her once to feel what it could have been like if you had not been paralyzed by fear and your own anxieties, you just want to kiss her to quell a desire and try to shut down feelings you were just  _ so  _ aware of at that moment. She nodded and said yes, quietly, looking you in the eyes and you kissed her, just once, chastely on the lips. There’s no tongue and it lasts a second and you were still straddling Castiel’s hips. The small smile she gave you was all you had ever needed, and you felt something in the pit of your stomach that was not arousal. 

At that moment they were the people you wanted most (the one you had wanted and lost because of your own cowardice and another you had never expected to want, but he was surely making his way into your heart) and it hurt because you knew you couldn’t ever be a part of it, a part of them because they obviously had something (and you were not a part of it). 

You barely remember what happened after that kiss, but you know that Iris saw you to your room and ensured you would be okay; she was the least drunk and you don’t know what flicked this protective switch in her, but it is soft and you love it, though it leaves you with the bittersweet taste of the only kiss you shared still in your mouth. She won’t love you as you do. She wishes you goodnight, and as you sit on your unmade bed, she kisses your forehead. You don’t know how to feel as you hear the front door closing behind her and Castiel, and you crash into your pillow, hoping at least he won’t remember anything of what happened. 

It’s after that night you think developed what feels like a crush on Castiel. You’re still not sure, because it still feels too much like friendship, but also too weird of a feeling to  _ just  _ be friendship. 

(You kissed him. You straddled him. You were ready to do whatever it was you were going to do while you were both drunk. You know you’re at least physically attracted to him, and still, you don’t know what to do with that attraction because you are nearly eighteen and you have never bothered answering the question that’s been asking at the back of your mind since you were fifteen.)

You decide to not tell him, to not act on any of these feelings, and to remain as normal as you can in his presence.

Iris never said anything about that night either, but there was so much she wasn’t saying that it is still loud and hanging heavily between you when you hang out with her, because you still do. She’s still your friend. Castiel is also still your friend. You wish you could only feel friendship towards both of them.


	3. infinite love without fullfilment

You’re a gemini, Iris is a cancer and Castiel is a leo. You are three signs neighbouring on the zodiac wheel and maybe that was a sign that things would not be simple, and you wish your heart would not twist when you see the telling signs between them. You recognize the way Castiel looks at Iris and how he teases her, and it could still only be the result of a close friendship, but some things are just too easy to see. You know you can never be a part of what they have, a childhood friend, falling in love, because you did not have friends when you were a child and you don’t know how to fall in love and be loved as much in return. You only know how to pine and pine and have unrequited crushes on people who can’t include you. 

When you see their hands brushing when they sit together in class and the gentle but discreet touches between them, you stop hoping and close yourself off. You set down all of your feelings for them into tiny boxes that you place in a corner of your mind, along with the nagging question of your sexuality that you still don’t have the answer to. 


	4. the manic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nath finally shows up and the most vent-y part of the fic is finally done

You’re not exactly sure when and where Nathaniel came into play, when he started taking residence in your head as your first real friend, not a mutual friend of Alexy, not a friend you have a crush on and hold hands once while watching a movie, but the first person you call  _ your _ friend. It’s a strange sensation for the both of you because he had never had a real friend either until he moved out of his parent’s house and became friends with you. He starts by lending you some of his novels, most of them you only get halfway through before giving them back because the story is still not quite the right one to really get your attention. You introduce him to some of your favourite sci-fi content and you watch Metropolis and Blade Runner together in your basement. 

(On the same couch, in the same way where and when Iris held your hand. You try not to think about that.)

He finally gets you to start reading seriously when he gives you a copy of  _ 2001, A Space Odyssey  _ that he found in a secondhand bookstore. You read it in one night and you’re so, so tired when you meet with him the day after, but the smile he gives you and the feeling of having accomplished something are just too good. 

It’s early March when Nathaniel brings you to his favourite bookstore in town, and you can’t help but look at him as he goes through the narrow isles, guiding you to the science-fiction and horror section. You find two Star Trek books and a zombie novel; your finds are less than 5$. 

Nathaniel has not found anything, but he seems to know the owner and the staff quite well; you heard him talk casually to one of the employees sorting through a messy box of romance novels while you were combing through the shelves to find something that grabbed your attention. She asked him about his new place and how he was doing, and that’s when you feel like you’re listening in to something that you’re not supposed to. You’re not quite at the stage in your friendship that you’re sharing trauma stories; he’s told you a bit about how he’s doing and how he’s adapting to living alone, but you don’t know the whole story. You don’t know the nooks and crannies of all the abuse he went through. Likewise, you haven’t told him about your anxiety yet, or about the eating disorder that’s been eating at you for years. He knows about your ADHD, though it’s not new to him; anyone would notice something off about the way you interact with the world. 

You think you’ll share all of that with him in time, and maybe he’ll share some of his trouble with you in return. 


	5. kept

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's someone in my life, so i'm still writing this fic because i need to fictionalize everything to process it. i'm swamped w uni work already, but this helps so here's part 5

There is a tension between you and him, and you don’t exactly know what it is. You like to think that your years of watching and studying people from afar have given you a good sense at reading the people close to you, but you still can’t tell what exactly is the kind of tension you have with Nathaniel. He’s just your friend, you think. You try to convince yourself and you don’t think about it. He’s just your very attractive, very traumatized, very straight friend. 

You zone out when he’s talking to you sometimes. You stare at him and your eyes look almost past him, and you get lost in the slope of his nose, the bags under his eyes (he doesn’t look as tired as you; apparently, you look exhausted), the curve of his jaw. You look at him without really seeing him because your mind is empty and filled with the thought that you shouldn’t find Nathaniel so attractive. And it’s a different kind of attraction than when you kissed Castiel in that bathroom, half-aware and hungry; it’s slow and it’s under your skin and you are sober and way too aware of it. 

(You have not kissed anyone since that night with Iris and Castiel. You sometimes let your mind wonder what it would be like to kiss Nathaniel. It would be nice, probably.)

That kind of attraction scares you. It’s terrifying because the monster of rejection inside your head wakes up and takes up all the space you would need to think, and when it is too loud you start to close yourself up, you retreat from whatever connection might have been made. Your isolation is comforting because it is what you know best, it’s routine and it’s quiet, but it’s tiring. You are tired of being the only one in your own head. 

Nathaniel is (you learn this when you ask him if he’s ever looked at his birth chart he hasn’t, so you force him to make a co-star account and add you; you immediately check your compatibility) an Aquarius sun, Virgo rising, Scorpio moon. His Venus is in Taurus and his Mars in Scorpio. You don’t know what any of it means, but you go read all about it the moment you’re alone, on his co-star profile. 

“You don’t use dynamite to blast a heart open,” the app tells you, on your compatibility for today. You call bullshit. You would blast your own heart open just so you wouldn’t be afraid of (and so attracted to) Nathaniel. 


	6. i hope i think (p1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm on fucking fire writing this procrastinating on school stuff  
> small warning for eating disorder stuff

Alexy remembers your childhood more than you do. He remembers very clearly your first year in school together, and when you started losing your baby teeth before him. You don’t remember your childhood very clearly, but of the events that remain clear in your head, the time you broke your nose when you fell out of a tree at 11 and your bike riding accident a few months later, right after your 12th birthday stand out. 

They happened at an age where you still found pleasure in going outside and your friends and Alexy’s friends were the same people. The time where your mother isn’t pestering you to get some sunlight seems so far, just like the time where you didn’t have bags under your eyes that seem to darken every day. The time where you didn’t intentionally starve yourself because the sole thought of food makes you shiver at the thought of the last time you binged. 

You broke your wrist and fractured a rib from that bike accident that is still very clear in your mind. You had some nasty bruises that were cool to show off to your friends. They signed your cast, and you showed it off to your mom when you came home that day. 

Your nose is still crooked from when you broke it all those years ago, and for a while, it was one of the tells for your teachers to tell you and Alexy apart. When he came out and his fashion sense started to change and he started dying his hair, that wasn’t necessary anymore. You were suddenly very, very different from each other. You always were. But since then, it seems like something like a chasm has been surely growing between you. You’re missing pieces, and until you find them, you don’t know how to catch up to everyone around you. You don’t know yet that you can only find those pieces within yourself, and that searching for them in other people (you’ve searched for them in Violette and her crystals, Iris and the single kiss you shared, Castiel and the eating desire he made you feel, Nathaniel and whatever is filling your friendship) won’t ever work. 

You see your brother move forward, while you stay behind, forever stuck in your unknowing of yourself. 


	7. of bike riding when i'm dying (p2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BIG WARNING for talk of suicide attempt and minor warning for ed mention  
> i'm sorry for projecting all my issues on these two but i've been doing it for years i can't just stop now

Something Alexy sometimes pretends has not happened but that you remember almost too clearly is his suicide attempt. 

You were fifteen, and it was you who found him in the bathroom. You remember the instant panic rising in your throat as you screamed for your mom to call someone. You remember the ambulance, and the first time you visited him in the hospital. You remember the follow-up appointments with a therapist in the months after. You remember he complained every time about having to go. On the rare occasions he tells you about those therapy sessions now, he sounds so different from back then, almost grateful that they happened because he learned so much about himself, and he tells you you should try seeing one. Mom and dad will pay for it, they just want to see you happy. 

They just want to see you happy. Are you happy? Not really. You exist. You go through life. But you’re still searching for something. 

The scars on Alexy’s wrist have faded with time and only remain white lines that someone who doesn’t know they’re there wouldn’t notice anything. Right after his attempt was when you stopped eating for the first time. 


	8. a new error

There’s a party at Iris’s house. She invited you, and you’re still not really sure you want to go. What exactly is your relationship with her? You can’t answer that either. There is sometimes an awkwardness in the air between you, like she is still waiting for something that she knows will never happen. You know that this is the legacy of your cowardice, of the time where you were too afraid of rejection to do anything but watch her leave. And move on. And kiss Castiel in front of you. And you long for this kind of softness; you wish so badly someone would give it to you. 

You are touch starved and cold, and you accept Iris’s invitation.

You don’t regret it until the day before, when the monster in the back of your head rears its ugly head, and you want to ditch so bad. You tell Alexy. He will not let you. He looks you in the eye, almost annoyed, almost understanding. He doesn’t understand, even if he tries. You try to tell him without telling him that you should not be where Castiel and Iris are because you are afraid of what you feel for them, and you don’t want the events of the bathroom to happen again, you don’t want to lose your carefully crafted nonchalance because the jealousy and desire is still eating at you. You try to tell him all of that, without saying it. You hope Alexy understands, by whatever new age esoteric link people think that twins have (you think you had that link, once upon a time, but that it grew weak when you grew up; maybe, just maybe, this is a part of your beliefs).

“So, you have a crush on her?” He asks you. It’s not a crush. Not anymore, it’s not just that anymore you try explaining to him. You don’t mention Castiel. You try not to, but he’s in every word you speak about Iris. You hope Alexy understands that you’re also attracted to him because it still feels too much for you to put words on. 

Neither the universe nor Alexy have heard you because he looks at you and rolls his eyes, and says that you’re coming anyway. There will be enough people that you don’t have to hang out with them all night. Also, you’ve been too antisocial lately. 

You smoke an entire joint before heading out the day after. When rejection comes, you don’t want to be there for it.


	9. replay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear the next part is gonna be long okay

You are a gemini sun, cancer rising and libra moon; Iris is a cancer sun, libra rising and gemini moon. You learn this the night of the party at her house, where you started talking about astrology, late into the night, when things started to quiet down. She added you on co-star and you compared your charts, only to find that they are oddly similar. 

Your ascendant, moon and sun signs are the same, only placed differently, like someone took one of your charts to make the other but first put it in a bag and shook it before pulling and constructing how you are made in stars. You start to think of your chart as a distorted version of hers. When you look at her, you think you see what you could be without the fear gripping your insides every time you get close to someone. 

  
  



End file.
